1,981 karma · joined January 11, 2012
Once Hybrid/Remote started, suicides worse, implying worse than baseline. But slightly within error bars for most.
So order of good > bad: No School > In-Person school > Hybrid
But to me it feels orthogonal to the benefits of increased state capacity, trade, and standardized coinage that helped provide the Roman Empire it's economic benefits. Yes much was built by slaves, but other empires also had slaves. So what was the comparative advantage of Rome?
Not to mention some of the biggest political shifts that happen around that era. The shift to the Late Roman empire is marked with a series of assassinations of the Emperor. Partially because of consolidation of the position's power and prestige. And in contrast other empires to the East and West organized and grew in power.
"Instead, I think the stronger point here ... is that the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West – while it was a catastrophe for those people living at the time – was less a product of ‘hoards of barbarians’ coming over the frontier ... and instead a product of actors within the political system, within the empire, tearing it apart out of the pursuit of their own interests, deceived by the assumption that something so old could never simply vanish…until it did. The consequences of their decisions and of their failure to recognize the fragility of the clockwork machine that suspended them above the poverty to come (and that it was already damaged) were great and terrible."
But I highly recommend walking through all the data and discussion of exactly what that clockwork machine was. And then think about if/how today's society is different.
Liz Cheney
Mitt Romney
David French
Reason media (Libertarian)
Andrew Sullivan
These all tend to fall under the more 80s/90s Neoconservative or Liberalism banner instead of the more aggressive New Right
Minor plug for UnCiv being FOSS
For example, making their skin literally red. Potentially artistic license, but also very odd considering that isn't a real skin color. Or stating that they were white to begin with and then were turned red, implying a type of deficiency/aberration from "normal" white. Plus the term "redskin" was used historically as a pejorative and associated with contempt, derision, condescension, or sentimental paeans to the noble savage. The stereotype of huge noses also is frowned upon since it was used to make claims of their savagery and brutishness unlike the civilized Europeans. (See also stereotyping Jews as having big noses)
Similarly, the song implies that the entire language is non-sensical words instead of actually being a full language. This is probably the biggest issue. The tribes actually had a full language for communication, not just a bunch of grunts.
It also takes something that would have very specific and special meaning, a war dance, and turns it into a party dance.
The sexism isn't great either. Forcing Wendy to be the aid since she's a girl instead of letting her join in the fun.
https://www.dailynews.com/2021/10/13/biden-to-announce-that-...
Often it is impractical to perform large studies. Partially by logistics and often by funding. But if there are lots of smaller studies you can aggregate the data to check for overall significant results. But mainly they are helpful to give a "survey" of the current research instead of having to link to 10 different studies and hope someone else sorts out what the data says.
But as you point out, there are two major flaws in the assumptions. First, that the scientific procedure is sound. Secondly, that the data is handled properly, and thus you can take the summary and back out the underlying data.
Unfortunately trying to fix the first is really, really hard.
The second is somewhat mitigatable. As the Nature article suggests, you could publish the underlying data (anonymized of course). This would help in two ways. First, the meta-analysis could check for confounding variables to control across all of the data. The second major one is it would help people spot fraudulent data.
However, as anyone who handles datasets knows, publishing and wrangling data into a useable state from multiple sources is a serious pain in the neck. Plus a lot of concerns about how de-anonymized the data would be. As we've known, with enough metadata it can be used to identify individuals. And publicly publishing dais data would definitely allow for some serious sleuthing work to be done.
This is noteworthy because it's also the only other RCT to show strong effect on mortality (see Fig3 in the two papers).
Original Marik, Kory paper Fig3 is here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34375047/#&gid=article-figur...
Also, the Nature article is concerned that the underlying data isn't sound due to bad randomization and thus naive meta-analysis is inherently flawed in these cases.
Some even utilize a fixed long set of numbers so that it doesn't have to generate a random number every call.
I first encountered it in DotA. Similar to another comment about LoL, the longer you don't Crit the higher chance your next attack with Crit, and vice versa. Higher level players would intentionally "save" a Crit (look for a string of non-Crits while hitting mobs) to ensure high burst damage on heroes. https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Pseudo_Random_Distribution
COVID is agnostically treated alongside those protocols. So if COVID symptoms are severe enough to bump the priority of a bed, then the worst person gets the bed. And as capacity is filled up, more triage and rationing of care/equipment for the worst patients takes priority.
Making a two-track quota/rationing of care based on the source of distress is a poor precedent for health care.
All of my friends who aren't getting the vaccine and vocal about it are pushing some pretty out there reasons. It may have started from relatively reasonable reasons, but it has morphed into an especially vitrolic ideology and in-group signaling rather quickly.
Also, a lot of polls show there is a sticky group of people who will never get it and that population hasn't changed much over time. So at this point there's not much you can move the needle on them via facts and all that.
Doesn't mean we shouldn't stop trying.
Highly recommend the You Are Not So Smart podcast on how to have beneficial discussions with anti-vax individuals. One key is don't use social media (eg in public).
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2021/08/23/yanss-213-how-to-imp...
Who would you recommend as quality filter brands?
Seems like Graphene only provides legacy support once Google drops support.
It's like understanding syntax or grammar for a language. Making explicit names, categories, and systems to take apart what you're doing/saying. 99% of the time though people don't think about that, they go by "feel."
But if you can understand the underlying framework, you can also work to intentionally use those to your advantage such as by reinforcing expectations or subverting them in clever ways. Obviously you can also do this by "feel," but an understanding of the underlying mechanics and systems gives you a better framework to spot the points where you can get away with things. When you want to get deeper and push the boundaries of a craft it also helps to understand what "best practices" are in place and why, and then look to exploit them.
I have a friend who was self-taught guitar and a variety of other instruments and only recently started on piano and proper theory. It's been fun watching him recognize and get a framework for why things he's intuitively known, such as how a cadence works or key transitions through a circle of fifths, be brought to the surface explicitly.
Two studies in Brazil have shown a pretty significant reduction in hospitalizations in a RCT of fluvoxamine. More data obviously required.
Plus there has been more work on other treatments, but most are pretty expensive.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22619137/fluvoxamine-covi...
It's a cocktail of vaccines against the expected dominant strains based on data of strains in the opposite hemisphere because it mutates too quickly to produce a targeted vaccine against any specific strain before it arrives.
But I believe they can develop the vaccine fresh as new strains arrive, as well as reuse previous vaccine strains.
Veritasium actually did an interesting episode recently about how the major YouTubers optimize their titles and thumbnails using real time data now to figure out what works to go more viral. And apparently there's a convergence on "shocked" face.
That being said, I do appreciate that allsides uses an interesting method to blind bias surveys to help categorize. But sometimes things don't always line up.
The original form was almost purely China=bad. Then it has morphed to include some of the US scientists as more information came out.
But specifically most (in the conspiracy group) are trying to tie it specifically to Dr Fauci who became a lightning rod for controversy and political attacks during the pandemic as he became the face of the government's response. Thus it's not all US scientists. Just the ones some don't like politically and who are "in bed with China."
And furthermore, sure the US may have funded some of it, but at the end of the day China is the one who goofed.
Of course, I'm speculating a lot and there are a lot of variations that I've seen for support for the lab leak theory. Just trying to summarize some of the hotter takes I've seen.
That being said, there are a lot of confounding issues. Mostly political in nature.
First, the vast majority of people who insisted on the lab leak theory did it to deflect blame and target China as a scapegoat. And many trotted out terrible and conspiratorial reasonings for why the accidental lab leak theory was the "truth," many going to the point of it being an intentional leak and that it was designed in the lab by humans. Not to mention using these claims to suck up attention away from other things like actually handling the pandemic. And to pile on politically a China=bad narrative. So by association there's been a severe reluctance to add more ammo to this group's claims.
Secondly, history and the nature of the spread put the chances more on the side of a zoological vector given the information we have now. Obviously this isn't 100% proven yet, but so far most are hedging on historical priors. Especially considering the conditions of farming and the fur industry that exists in China. So the majority of the community side against the lab leak as the most likely option.
Of course, many scientists still leave open the option that it was a lab leak. We don't have enough information to completely be sure. And there's some odd circumstantial evidence that may point to a lab leak somehow. Including that China hasn't been the most forthcoming.
Still, it's very much a minority opinion in the field at this time and many people insisting it "must be investigated" seem to be doing it for political reasons as cover for other purposes.
Here's from Forbes an opinion piece about the current evidence we have so far about the origins and possible explanations. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/06/11/ask-...
Secondly, they can accumulate more wealth much faster than they can spend. Plus they can play with things on a longer time horizon and move internationally. Like, say once the sales tax drops.